Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. said its parent company Roche Holding AG's cancer drug Tecentriq received approval in Japan to treat patients with triple negative breast cancer.
Triple negative breast cancer is an aggressive type of breast cancer that does not have any of the receptors commonly found in breast cancer — estrogen, progesterone or excess human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. About 15% of breast cancer cases are triple negative based on the results of diagnostic tests.
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare approved Tecentriq, or atezolizumab, to treat triple negative breast cancer in patients who show the presence of PD-L1, a protein found on cancer cells.
Tecentriq is part of a class of tumor-targeting drugs called checkpoint inhibitors. The therapy blocks the PD-L1 protein on cancer cells from linking with a partner arm on healthy cells — an interaction that prevents the spread of the disease.
The new approval for the drug is based on a phase 3 trial dubbed IMpassion130. The combination of Tecentriq and chemotherapy met its main goal in the study of improving patients' disease symptoms.
Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare approved Tecentriq to treat non-small cell lung cancer in 2018 and extensive-stage small cell lung cancer in 2019.
In the U.S., Tecentriq is also indicated for urothelial carcinoma and a type of breast cancer.

